Wednesday, July 27, 2011

More Kre-O: Prowlin' Around

I'm not gonna turn this into some sort of toy review blog or whatever. There are plenty of others that do it better, if you're really after that sort of thing.

But I was out and about and I saw another Kre-O set on the shelf, and, well, being the hopeless addict I am, I snapped it up. I did say I'd keep giving this line a try, right? I think I did.

Anyway, so the set is Prowl, who is this guy:

That's a quote from the show.

He's the resident Transformo-cop, and all-around swell dude. I guess. For a fan of this stuff, I know remarkably little.

Anyway, so here's what the Kre-O set looks like, more or less, as officially built:

Tall drink o' water, ain't ye?

And right there you can see some of the major issues with the robot. Let's start at the start, however.

VEHICLE MODE

The cop car is pretty good. As good as Jazz, perhaps better. Still a little chunky, but the detailing on the back window is nice, and the lines are good. I still hate that they put a plate across the top of the door, though. But, eh, what are ya gonna do? I didn't take a photo of the amount of pieces left over after you build this, but trust me, it's shocking. I was literally shocked!

So that was fast.

ROBOT MODE

Ugh, and double-ugh. This is the first of the Kre-Os I got that has knee articulation, which is swell, and he also has full-rotating shoulders, which is also swell. But he's got some major issues with his wheres and whens, and he comes off looking rather silly. And the extra parts. Oh, the extra parts!! You can even see above in Seibertron's photo that they built the robot a little differently than the book says, if only to build up the arms and use up some of the 300 or so unused parts.

At this point I was going to post a picture of the official Hasbro images, showing the goofy pose they have him in to cover the terrible shoulder location, but have a look for yourself, and tell me what's weird. That robot is very different from the version you build in the instructions, but it actually answers some of my weird questions about this set.

WEIRD QUESTIONS

There's some real oddness going on throughout this kit. Nothing huge, but me being obsessed with leftover pieces, I noticed pretty much right away. Like I said, about 1800 pieces are not used in the robot mode, and cross-referencing them to those left over from the car, it became clear that no less than 4 pieces aren't used in either mode. Not just tiny pieces like LEGO usually tosses in, but big pieces. And there's extra stickers, too. Although I see from the preliminary robot above that there's one of the extra parts and the extra sticker on his arm. So... were these rushed in production? Was Prowl given extra parts to justify his extra cost? Who knows? The real question is, can he be salvaged?

FIXING PROWL

I AM the law.

Short answer; yes. The magic of Kre-O and whatnot, you see. With some effort [in this case, a lot of effort] you can get a much [much] better looking robot, and very, very few extra pieces. That thing on the ground is pretty much the stuff I couldn't smoothly integrate, and even it, with some imagination, can be explained away as a large gun. A junk-gun.

A junk-gun that shoots Photoshop!

Here's a shot of his backpack. It's a little bulky, yes, but no worse than how the book wants you to build it. You can even pull the back part off and it looks a smidge like a riot shield or whatever, if you're so inclined.

You get a clear view of his robot ass. Get it? There's a window there, is the joke.

So yeah. Re-arrange his shoulders, which ends up forcing you to rebuild his torso. Shorten his arms by altering his elbows. Ghetto-rig a backpack and reshuffle some of the leg parts, especially the clownshoes. And Bob's your uncle.

Although you're really just buying these for the Kreons.

With some effort, he's gone from the figure I was most regretful for buying, to pretty much my favourite of the bunch. Yeah, he's a bit less stable now, but I'm blaming that on the crazy-tight joints.

Oh, and I still hate the stickers. They're required, but the quality on them is poop.